


Twilight Zone Credits

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Oxenfree
Genre: End Game, F/M, First Times, Mild Angst, Multiple Orgasms, Not Incest, Rainy sex, Recreational Drug Use, Step-Sibling Incest, Underage Drinking, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, but not really, intimate sex, just two newly minted step siblings choosing what timeline they prefer, secrete ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 10:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14913387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: Summary: All three of them - Alex, Ren and Jonas - heard the warning from Other-Alex and just like that, years worth of nights trapped on Edwards Island came rushing back. Sensory overload. In one glitch, Jonas was a step-brother. In another, a friend. One, a rando dude who smoked way too many cigarettes and well, in another he was something more...A/N: I’ve been dabbling with writing a sorta smutty, sorta sweet and angsty story with Alex and Jonas for awhile now. Here it is.Disclaimer: Everyone is of legal age in this story.





	Twilight Zone Credits

Exhaust fumes.

 

The crusty skid of burrito filling.

 

Ocean aromas like beached whale and seaweed cascaded and breezed through the gas station parking lot. The intrepid terror and realization on everyone’s faces said all that Alex had no words for. The radio transmission fuzzed with limbo static; decayed reality with the hint of nostalgia. The voice on the other end, her own but not her own, breathed and eventually…

 

_ ‘Are you there? Answer - answer me, Me. Wow, that sounds weird.’ _

 

Ren burst out in a vein of laughter so forced, it made Jonas shift on his sneakers, “Oh, my god. Alex, you’re hilarious! This is like… a really great prank. Kudos. I don’t know how you pulled this one off but - wait, you know what? - I give it an A-plus for-“

 

Alex shushed Ren, kicked his shin when he started to laugh nervously, bellying another attempt at culling the weird, Twilight Zone moment between capturing a dream once forgotten and holding onto the ropes of reality.

 

_ ‘-explain it but just… just don’t go. Don’t go tonight.’ _

 

"Alex…?" Jonas exhaled in a cloud of nicotine and regrets - regrets for coming out tonight with his newly minted stepsister and her best friend. Maybe he would have instead been stuck in juvie still, and Alex didn't even know why she knew as much as she did about that right now, but it felt like lifetimes were flooding back. The same way drunk actions leaked in the morning after, except this stuff spanned years.

 

_ ‘-past, it won’t change for long-‘ _

 

“Give me that thing!” Ren’s usually stoned shell of joy cracked, exposing someone remembering - someone scared. His pupils dialed into pinpricks. Black ink in the sea at mid-day. Her own lips felt bloodless as an ouroboros breathed around her brain. Endless cycles. Trying the same thing over and over again and getting nowhere.

 

Alex felt her fingers twitching. The lamplight hovering over the Green Machine hand-me-down of Ren's car swelled and dimmed as he turned the radio back. A sweat sheen appeared under his blonde curls, only to dry with the salty breeze and all the while Jonas stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets, back to the sedan. Silent. A cigarette, fused to his lower lip with spit, smoldered as the same memories hitting the rest of them, grew back like weeds in a barren field. 

 

Something like Hell reached in through the static receiver, opening its ghastly maw for one final, fatal breath. **Leave. Possible.** before Carley’s idea of music overlapped decades of murky memories. 

 

Reality stabilized. The fumes of rubbing alcohol under her taste buds felt like she’d survived an electrical shock and right there, in the gas station parking lot, she looked at two pairs of wide eyes watching her - looking through her - seeing what she saw through her own haunting gaze. 

 

“How many years did we-“ Ren started. 

 

“You-you... kissed me...“ Jonas accused breathlessly towards an Alex who was counting all the loops. Nights of mistakes. Evening skies filled with tiny eyes as they simultaneous remembered and forgot. The Sunken laughing and crying - recalling themselves as individual entities toward the end.

 

Alex saw herself clutching a decommissioned transmitter in a dark, cold place where no one was themselves. She saw herself crying where no one could see. A sacrifice for everyone else, including a part of her that would never fully understand.

 

**We.**

 

Collective fears and dulled spite. 

 

She brought them fear that final time. Alex - a different Alex - gave them the taste of another’s sacrifice but she’d stumbled before opening her eyes back on the boat where the loop repeated again and again.

 

The closet… that dresser in the cave. Those Alex’s smelt the salt-soaked wood. She knew the sweaty, wet metal smell of a decommissioned communications radio like Michael’s phantom ghost by then and then-

 

“Do you know what this means?” Ren’s voice was shaken like that time he nearly fell off the rock wall in fourth grade during the party Clarissa didn’t invite them too. It was a shake similar to immediate relief and reflection. Like life flashing before your eyes type of thing… or someone who ate one too many space cookies.

 

Alex stood against the sea breeze but couldn’t stand there and look at anything but the oil-stained parking lot, “For a little while I had Michael - and you… got with Nona. Jonas…”

 

"Don't-don't say anything," Jonas, the stepbrother, her friend… maybe a best friend or something more in one loop or a dozen, sunk back into the sedan with a half burnt cigarette and stared out at the little open booklet of groves that exposed the ocean… the island. He looked pale but pink like a blush; remembering too. 

 

Alex licked her lips, tasting salt spray and second-hand cigarettes and turned the radio off. Suddenly, there was silence except for the muffled tv chatter from inside the gas station and the timeless rocking of waves along the jagged shore. 

 

They didn’t say anything else after that. Michael would have pulled them all in for a group hug, said something about how ‘we’re okay now’ and all that. ‘It’s behind us. We’re safe now.’ But Michael wasn’t there. That was the rube. To escape the loop, there was no saving Michael - no going back to fix her mistakes. She’d live with the guilt while another Alex felt the joy of bringing him back… at least for a little while.

 

Alex listened to the looping memories as the world blurred by through the car window. A messy mass in her head was turning into a cluster headache as she cherry-picked her brother's voice to calm her while Jonas chain smoked behind the wheel and Ren ate his magic brownies with chewy, nervous determination. Getting high right now seemed like a bad idea, but all Alex wanted to do was drink the remaining bottle of her mom's vodka, behind the frozen peas. 

 

**Leave. Not. Possible.**

 

They passed the pizza place - past Ren's house and drove straight to her and Jonas' home. In the loops, they never made it past whatever hazy reality prom and finals occupied. Whatever time frame she had Michael back seemed behind them, floating down the road while they sped further and farther away. He was gone, and Jonas was new and possibly an asshole, except Alex knew him better than a whole lifetime would afford her… same as everyone else. Nona, Ren, and Clarissa even. They all felt more familiar than Michael ever had… or her Mom and Dad for that matter.

 

Alex looked over the stark canvas- red of her shoulder at her stepbrother. The whites of his eyes jerked back to the road as if he’d been staring at her; smoke trails crawling through the windless air of the sedan, gathering above their heads like a reverse fog. 

 

Her Mom and Jonas' Dad were on a three-day weekend retreat half a day down south and well… it just didn't feel right to sleep alone. 

 

That night they all laid up in the space between the sofa and the tv downstairs. Sleeping bags unzipped and pillows laid out with blankets in every color and texture. 

 

Sometimes Alex would wake up with the shift-static between late-night commercials and cling to whatever was close. At some point in the night, she pulled her fingers out of Jonas' stomach, looking up to find him watching her with sleep-haze and a little awe, as if he was deep in thought over some accomplishment she couldn't remember or didn't want too. 

 

Whatever they all recalled, it wasn't the same. Some of them knew about events the other didn't, and Alex wasn't sure she liked Jonas' recalling a kiss where she remembered pushing him off a cliff during some stupid fight that got out of hand. At least he didn't remember that, though. Who knew what Ren remembered… if he was even in the real world right now at all.

 

Dude was two hash brownies over the limit and hadn’t moved since they’d all laid down. 

 

"I know-" Jonas started, lowering his voice, so it was below the white noise of late night reruns and sat up on an elbow, "I know we're not talking about it because what's there to really say, right? But I keep thinking… like - look, what if I close my eyes and everything resets again? What if we don't remember this or maybe we've been here a hundred times already and tomorrow I'll-"

 

“Jonas… I think…” Alex whispered and blinked into her Mom’s borrowed pillow, “I think it’s finished. Whatever happened last time - during that last loop...” She doesn’t know how to explain it, but she knows. There’s no fear… just regret that stopping the loops meant Michael wasn’t coming back. 

 

Alex pulled her hand away from Jonas when he raised it to touch her knuckles. Something about being so close, right now, while she felt so vulnerable and… unsure, just didn't seem right. Even though he only looked slightly offended, Jonas leaned back into the firm pillow from the sofa and watched her with cogs turning; tired eyes hovered over her as their gazes shifted under the tv glow. 

 

"It's over. This is it," Alex admitted finally. 

 

There was no going back to fix what happened a year ago. Her Mom remarried, her Dad bailed, and he probably won't call her for a couple years at least and Jonas… he's her stepbrother now which means he shouldn't… can't...

 

“Don’t,“ Alex managed just before Jonas kept closing in and did something stupid, like lean in with his eyes half-hooded and try to kiss her.  **Again.** Which he was doing now without even realizing it.

 

A blush burned on his pale skin, but he retreated, stammering like a silent, gulping fish. Alex felt at once more of that regret but also a reminder that whatever happened on the island… should remain there. Things couldn't be weird between them now. Not that nothing would ever be the same after tonight and all the repeating nights before it, but she had to try. They both did. 

 

“I feel like I’m thirty…” he whispered beneath the tv chatter.

 

Alex nodded in agreement and released a giant breath before falling back into the mountain of pillows. No, she didn't think this timeline was going to reset. She knew they were stuck in this reality because the loop reset was predictable in where it linked together and they were well past that now. As she thought about how weird tonight was - how broken the rules were - Jonas pretended to watch whatever infomercial was on the static screen, but Alex could feel him looking over at her like someone who thought they would catch a ghost out the corner of their eye. She didn't blame him.

 

Under his breath, he continued; hoarse like a throat full of smoke, "... like how long do you think we were there? - repeating that night? It feels like those months after the island was looping for years. All those resets even tonight. How many did we live through?"

 

Alex didn’t have an answer to that. Maybe Ren did… maybe Nona and Clarissa did? Suddenly, Alex sat up, feeling sick and unsure and scared. 

 

“Do you think Clarissa and Nona remember?” She asked Jonas in a reedy tone as she breathed through the final wave of nausea.

 

He shrugged a shoulder, itching at the chest of his rusty v-neck shirt where his jacket pocket would have been had he been wearing the army-green outerwear. Looking for smokes, she realized, suddenly wanting one even though every time he offered, no matter the loop, they always made her choke. 

 

"I could use some fresh air," she said offhanded, giving him a quick look out the side of her eye where his fingers were shaking, and his adam's apple bobbed with a nervous swallow. Alex knew what he was thinking. After the loops and years and unending moments of repeated events, she could decode the way his eyes crinkled and his mouth thinned. He wanted something from her, but Alex knew it was a bad idea.

 

They stepped out onto the patio with the crickets in full swing. Jonas shrugged on his jacket with a cloudy breath while Alex let the cold cleanse her, standing in her jeans and crewneck with the orange socks wrinkled around her ankles. The white pines swayed in the breeze, and even though they were miles away from the coastline, the odor of salt hung in the wind. 

 

The moon cut through the leaves, muted against the bare-bulb porch light. The soft incandescence caught the smoke that curled from their shared cigarette - a thing that felt just shy of inappropriate. The fresh wet stick of his saliva on her lips as she breathed in the nicotine made her blush a darker, more purple-stain than Jonas' pink flush. 

 

“Sorry about earlier - I was just…” smoke curled out the edge of his mouth from his last hit. Jonas didn’t look away from the tree line beyond the deck when he continued, “I guess… I… guess I just forgot we’re supposed to live together this time, you know?”

 

“Yeah…” she breathed; exhaling smoke smoothly this time before handing the cigarette back to him, “I don’t know what you remember Jonas, but if in some weird timeline we were… something else… we’re siblings now.”

 

“Step-siblings,” he corrected, taking a hard drag that crawled out his nostrils like a furious bull.

 

He took another pull on the cigarette and stuffed it between his teeth. Alex watched the thinly veiled frustration cross his face as the smoke cherried and shortened. Her stomach pulled tight at the thought of tugging him close; kissing him to see if she remember the other one… or other ‘ones.’ The tip of his tongue pressed the end of the filter down - teeth holding the smoke tight - and suddenly that kiss he thought to mention before anything else came to her. 

 

They'd been stuck in some loop between Epiphany Field's and the forest and somewhere along the way her eyes had gone red and wet. Not The Sunken, just her own fragile sanity slipping away. Jonas had grabbed her, stumbling with the weight of the torn world they'd occupied and pulled her body closer. The sway to and fro, like the waves on the coast made her grow closer, hugging her arms around his neck - fingers running through the soft brown strands under his beanie - and kissed him. 

 

The way he’d mentioned it in the parking lot… the mildly accusing tone… it made Alex think she’d done something inappropriate - something he didn’t want. The memories they now shared said differently. Alex might have been the one to instigate the kiss, but Jonas hadn’t been an unwilling recipient… not at all…

 

There, on the porch, sharing the fast fading cigarette, Alex blushed and remembered all the details like she’d experience it all that evening. 

 

The two of them had gone at it like drunken teenagers discovering how to make out for the first time. Jonas… blushing, nervous Jonas… he'd even pulled away for a second to ask if she wanted to ‘go all the way' before the loop had skipped back again; a cassette on rewind. They'd been step-siblings then too, and yet Alex didn't know if she'd have said no or not had the moment not gone back to replay. 

 

All that uncertainty. The fragile time they'd all clung to desperately and maybe she'd never gone all the way before, but the idea at the time had gotten her heart racing. She would have followed him into the radio station and taken anything over the confusing limbo they'd been stuck in. Alex would have had sex with him… and maybe - maybe a version of her already had.

 

Now, the loop was broken. The remnants lingered, yeah… but she wasn’t the same Alex as the one who’d been about to fuck her stepbrother, or so she told herself. Beside Jonas, Alex stood there with thinly-socked feet on the soft, cool porch and felt her face go red. Blood pounded in her cheeks while he handed her the cigarette, shiny with spit at the end. 

 

“Let’s,” she swallowed and took a drag, “let’s promise each other right now, right here, to never talk about that kiss again.”

 

He looked hurt. Those thick eyebrows pulled up. The emotion was unmistakable, but he nodded anyway and said in a low, private tone, "Agreed."

 

After the cigarette was stubbed out in the rosemary planter, Jonas slid his beanie off and ran four fingers through the choppy bangs over his forehead.

 

"You know," he started up and offered her a fake smile, "I'm your older brother now like it or not, and it's gonna be my job to defend your honor… can't be doing that when I'm… well…"

 

Alex sent him a glare. 

 

“... uh, sorry. Right. No more talking about it.”

 

Yeah. No more talking about it. That's where they left it, but Alex didn't feel like they made much of a promise by the time the nicotine rush ran out and the night passed by, bringing a fresh morning and a new set of obstacles.

 

Ren slept in until past noon until Alex heard him yelling about how ‘everyone needs to drop what they're doing or who they're doing and meet at Alfredo's because shit is about to go down!' 

 

There was a moment in the bathroom mirror where she noticed Jonas hovering in the hallway, tugging at his shirt where it's gotten trapped in his belt buckle. She caught a glimpse of flat, pale stomach and the ghosting of body hair. The sight made her caramel cheeks go a little red, but she did well to keep any other thoughts out of her head. 

 

Really, Ren… inappropriate as always.

 

It turned out that Ren hadn't had some weird, pot brownie hive-mind communication with everyone else. The phone just rang without her having heard it, and Clarissa was on the other line talking about possession and how Alex saved her and that ‘NO! It wasn't a dream.' 

 

Turned out that both she and Nona had the same sudden memory shocks the three of them did right before stepping on the ferry.

 

All five of them met up at Alfredo's half an hour later; looking at each other like they were seeing a thousand different versions of the same person. 

 

They spent the next several hours in a pizza joint at the very back speaking in hushed tones and pizza crust mouths until it was decided they all felt like they were in their late twenties, stuck in the bodies of teenagers. Judging by the number of memories they all had, it felt like Alex had the mental capacity of someone nearing their thirtieth birthday… much older than she was now, that was for sure.

 

It was… unsettling. The whole thing between them was straight out of The Twilight Zone, but Alex didn’t think the outcome, considering everything, could have been any better. Even coming back without Michael… it could have been worse - a literal hell. Whatever terms her and Clarissa had been on before last night is gone now. They leave as friends. 

 

Ren left with a date and a kiss on the cheek from Nona and as for Jonas… well, he kept quiet on the drive home, and chain smoked the rest of the way after dropping Ren off to sleep away the dregs of his pot high. By the time they get home, it was a quarter after four in the afternoon which that meant she'd be alone with Jonas all evening… all night... 

 

Being alone with Jonas was… it was weird at first, but then things just smoothed out as the hours passed. It helps that they both keep their distances. There was this odor in the air that said both of them were up for talking about last night - about the years they spent in the loop if Alex could be honest about it but neither wanted to break the promise they'd made. 

 

That night on the porch should have been the end of it, but Alex's mind has been an ocean, not a winding river. All her memories and thoughts are just swimming there, mixed up in a big mass and Jonas probably wasn't much better, but after the pizza guy left with a crisp twenty dollar bill and they finally come face to face at the kitchen counter, it got harder to not think about it. That kiss… the whatever in between and what might or might not have happened later that neither of them can recall.

 

Of course, making a promise and keeping one were two entirely different things and by the time they were supposed to be in bed, Alex started feeling that same paranoid that Jonas had the night before. Like… what if he'd been right? What if Alex fell asleep and woke up the day before Jonas' plane landed; before the party on the island… before this moment? What if none of this mattered?

 

Wordless and wild-eyed, she grabbed Jonas on his way to the attic. The steam of a scalding shower hung around him and the jeans and loose black shirt sagged with trapped moisture, but Alex barely noticed anything aside from the sound he made when she pulled at his wrists. Like he'd been waiting for her to break all day. 

 

His skin was hot and damp under her cold fingers, but Alex had a feeling that this sensation in her chest - this fast forward motion in her heart - was the onset of a panic attack or something that was afraid of being trapped… displaced and she couldn't be alone.

 

She was so wrapped up in just getting down the stairs that his low question was lost in the dense distance between them. 

 

They sat on the couch with cups of her Mom's vodka mixed with cranberry juice from the fridge in the basement. It was gross, but it helped to calm her down. Not enough to get wasted, or even tipsy, but enough to dampen the terror in her stomach. 

 

Neither of them talked. Jonas didn't say a word because he was waiting for her to break the silence and Alex couldn't figure out what to say. It was okay, though… if Jonas talked she might have said something contrary to last night, and if that happened then she might as well start going steady with her stepbrother. New stepbrother, her other voice reminded her… and not always a stepbrother, as if that changed things. 

 

Sometimes he was just a guy Ren brought along that she thought looked like a bad boy with a smoking habit and cold eyes that seemed like they didn't give a shit about anything… sometimes he was - 

 

Her boyfriend, or something like it. A fuck buddy, maybe.

 

What the booze did for Jonas, she wasn't sure but by the time the clock hit midnight she was blurry eyed and drunk and Jonas was still looking inside the dixie cup of his first drink on the other side of the sofa. He was far away. Emotionally and physically, but Alex was drunk, and she had a habit of thinking every idea she had while intoxicated was a good one, so she crawled across the middle cushion and pulled at Jonas' shoulders until he was looking at her like she was insane. He slid back against the armrest and Alex went with him - a leg over his waist between bare skin and the sofa back - before she leaned down and kissed him. 

 

Jonas exhaled through his nose as their lips met. She was sloppy, and it wasn't great, and when he pushed her back, looking like she'd just kicked him in the throat, Alex knew that getting drunk was a dumb idea. 

 

"We-we shouldn't," Jonas stuttered. He held her back by the shoulders and swallowed thickly when she sank into him a little harder, "... look, Alex, you're drunk, and this is - this is hot - trust me - but you're right… and even if you weren't…"

 

Alex frowned, listening as her heart pulsed in her ears.

 

“... even if you didn’t mean what you said last night. I can’t let you do this right now.”

 

The only good thing from that night was that when Alex woke up, time hadn't looped. She was hungover and, but reality hadn't backtracked. Today wasn't yesterday or the night before. It was now. Which meant they all were locked in this timeline for better or for worse, and Alex still had another day and night and morning alone with Jonas unless she found something to do or somewhere else to go.

 

Ren and Nona were on some date at the planetarium, watching a laser light show and probably making out with a side of handie action if Ren got lucky. After getting to know Nona on the island, through the many loops and events, Alex felt she knew her well enough to guess that anything today was gonna be way less than what Ren had hoped for. It would be a fun phone call later when the dude came home with blue balls.

 

Alex spent most of the morning drinking coffee on the sofa, while the weather channel droned on about evening showers and high winds by the coast. None of it really clicked until the thunder started up around noon and Alex got up to check the back patio but realized just as Jonas came downstairs that it was her stomach rumbling.

 

Near the kitchen archway, Jonas looked at her and chuckled with a sleepy-husk, “So, I take it you skipped breakfast?” 

 

“Ugh, yeah… I guess. Wasn’t really feeling the whole ‘food’ thing this morning.”

 

Jonas tripped up and blushed a bit, or maybe it was just the warm lighting from the kitchen and the hard laugh that made blood rush to his face. Either way, Alex saw how vividly he remembered her drunken kiss and felt even less like eating after that.

 

"Hey-look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… well," Jonas said suddenly; laughter traces still in his throat, "Listen, how about I make it up to you? I make killer pancakes, and there are greasy sausage links in the freezer in the basement."

 

“Sure… whatever, not like I can stomach standing over a frying pan right now.”

 

Alex got the sausages from the deep freezer in the basement, pausing only to survey the collection of boxes still labeled ‘Michael’ in her Dad’s handwriting. 

 

It was real. Her brother wasn’t coming back. 

 

A part of her felt like a failure - like maybe there’d been a way to save him and break the chain… help The Sunken too if that had ever been possible. 

 

Her memories are murky when it comes to them.  **Us.** As if they’d only been an analogy for the endless cycles they’d been thrown through, but Alex knew in the modge podge of recollections that they were real, more real than reality had been and more than likely they were still there, stuck between the veil; hidden in the static.

 

“Just… don’t think about it, Alex,” she told herself, clutching the bagged sausages like a worry blanket and turned her back on the boxed memories for the promise of food upstairs. Just go back to accepting life as it was. No Michael. No Dad… just cobwebs that needed dusting. 

 

She didn’t actually think that she’d be ready to eat anything after all the vodka last night, but by the time Jonas had four stacks of pancakes done and a bowl of greasy, steaming sausages on the table, Alex was starving.

 

Aside from the Pizza at Alfredo's the day before, she hadn't eaten much. Something about thinking and categorizing everything that had happened in those repeated nights and months and the years that they all seemed to cluster into - it just… took it out of her and food was the last thing on her mind. Then, of course, she just wanted to get drunk and kiss her stepbrother apparently…

 

“Killer, right?”

 

Alex looked up at Jonas with a mouthful of chewed up pancake, a sausage between her fingers and smiled - it wasn't even a fake one. The greasy, syrup-sticky brunch made her feel ten times more human and way less hungover. She also agreed to go on a walk around the backyard property, down to the lagoon and show Jonas a couple cool spots to smoke a joint without her Mom and his Dad finding out.

 

“-and by the time you get back home, you’ll smell more like salt and pine sap than weed. Trust me, Mom doesn’t even know what it smells like.”

 

Jonas gave her a lopsided smile around a burning cigarette, “Pretty sure my Dad used to be a pothead when he was our age… so, he’ll know just by us sneaking out.”

 

"... yeah, I don't smoke - usually - so that's all on you, Jonas. The last time Ren got me to take a hit in a pot circle was like… ninth grade? I ate all his Mom's period chocolate and drank like four malted milkshakes."

 

“Wow, just - wow, Alex.”

 

“Yeah,” Alex mused as the dark smokey trails of rain clouds gathered in the east towards Edwards Island, “Also, I puked a lot of it up. I… don’t think it works on me like it does most people.” She blinked out across the lagoon, past the splattering of houses on the bank and saw the top peak of the island as it jutted from the wave of pine trees between the isle and home.

 

_ ‘But soon, I shall be so, that I can not remember anything, but the things that have never happened.’ _

 

Jonas shrugged and leaned back against a bare tree trunk, pulling his cigarette from his mouth and a look of deep reflection, "It's not like you're missing out on much. It's probably safer than getting shit faced, but," he sighed out a lungful of nicotine and looked out over the lagoon as the first little sprinkle of rain rattled the smooth surface, "-what do I know, right? Everyone's got their vices." 

 

Alex looked up at him on her usual spot overlooking the water - a flat rock that stuck out a few inches over the three foot drop off, and tossed the rock she'd been palm-smoothing into the gloomy lagoon water. The stone plunged into the water. Thunder cracked in the sky, and the rain started to come down like the weather channel promised. 

 

"Does it-," Alex paused, mulling over her words like a sour hard candy in her cheeks, " -do you think we'll always be weirded out by Edwards Island? Seems kinda - I dunno - unfair. Like, it used to be this enjoyable, cool place to go and hang out and now-"

 

Jonas finished Alex's sentence eerily on the head, "Now it's… tainted."

 

“... yeah.”

 

They sat around getting gradually more wet for a few minutes until the light peppering rain turned heavy and cold. By the time she and Jonas were back inside, they were drenched to the bone - clothes stuck and sagging off their limbs - and the wind chimes were singing, and the tv was dead as if the power had gone out while they were gone.

 

“Well, that’s not a great sign,” Alex muttered, nodding to the tv set power light blinking red.

 

"What? - the power?" Alex peered over at the dark living room and twisted the bulk of her ponytail until rainwater ran down her knuckles to the tile floor, "Yeah. It tends to flicker when it rains, but I guess it's already gone out once so prepare for board games and poker."

 

"Candles, flashlight - flare gun?" He smirked, "Just point me in the right direction, and I'll get the living room prepped. Hey, why don't you get the sheets and push pins and we can make an indoor fort for the night - kinda like we're not experiencing the end credits on the Outer Limits."

 

"I thought this was Twilight Zone sorta weird, but Outer Limits works too. Also, for the record, this is… so dumb," Alex grumbled, wet and cold and oddly… cleansed? She looked to Jonas who had rainwater dripping off the wet-clumped hair over his eyes and smiled up at him, "In other words, I love it."

 

For a little while, it felt… normal. They both put on some fresh clothes and made a terrible pillow fort in the living room that sagged so far on one end that Alex was nearly squashed up next to her step-brother while the rain pounded the house and the tv shit out reruns of The Brady Bunch. Oddly relatable? Sorta. 

 

They made hot pockets and ate ice cream and laughed at the lame tv-friendly jokes until the power went out and stayed out. Alex didn't drink - didn't feel the need to actually. Usually, she hated it when the power went out. Michael would always patch her in one the walkie-talkie and ask if she was cool… if she needed him to come in a fight the monster in her closet… and as she got older, it turned into a funny joke instead of a real offer. 

 

Alex tapped the flickering electric lamp while Jonas lit the last of her Mom’s vanilla candles and then they were left in silence more overwhelming than any of Ren’s bands could hope to achieve. Pervasive, pounding… nothing. 

 

When Jonas finally spoke, it was as booming as thunder, “Are you… like - are you getting flashbacks at all?”

 

“From the island?”

 

“... sorta. Some of them.”

 

“I guess so…” Alex said in a question, looking over at a guy who was lit by warm candlelight and chewing his lip like she’d seen him do cigarettes. He looked like he wanted to ask her something that went against the promise they’d made the night they got back from Funnie’s Family Market.

 

“Look,” Alex sighed, “I already ‘messed up’ whatever promise we made about… the thing… so, just spit it out, already. You get a free pass this time.”

 

Jonas rubbed his hands together in his lap, wiggling his socked toes stuffed under a denim knee against the side of her thigh as if it was purely unintentional and not… obvious. Intimate, sorta. It wasn’t as bold as holding hands, but the contact made Alex feel a little itchy and warm. She liked it - it reminded her of a feeling she had for him without any memory attached to it. Like her reaction to Jonas was mostly leftovers of moments, she’d forgotten for others and so on and so forth.

 

“I don’t want to make things more awkward than they already are - just - yeah, you know what? - forget I said anything.”

 

"That's pretty impossible, Jonas. You already brought it up, and now you're gonna have to vomit the whole ‘awkward thing' out because I'll just sit here and think it's way worse than it probably is."

 

"Okay," he turned around, lifting a leg up against the back of the couch and rested an arm on his raised knee, looking down at her with candlelight in his wide brown eyes, "... in one of the time loops, you and me… we were going steady. You had your brother back and I just - I just keep thinking about that timeline and that Alex and then I look over at you, and you're like… my sister now and-"

 

“Stepsister,” Alex interjected; cheeks red.

 

"stepsister, right… but it's all I can think about, and then you told me to shut up which - don't get me wrong, I agree with - but then you… kissed me last night and…"

 

“Jonas…”

 

“Look,” he tried, sighing with his eyes, “just tell me it’s impossible, that there’s no chance that we’ll ever be ‘that’ again, and I’ll drop it. Promise.”

 

She could lie to him - lie to herself - but Alex wasn't sure what memories would come back or how she was gonna feel in the morning. It shouldn't have come as such a surprise, but suddenly, Alex realized she barely knew a thing about… well, about anything and certainly nothing concrete about Jonas or who he was to her or what he'd be months or years from now. While a part of her felt older, she was still a teenager, and the duality of that meant half of her thought she knew what she was doing and the other part… had no clue. He was a brother in one life, her boyfriend in another and just some rando dude - related or not - in others. 

 

Jonas looked at her as she sat there in silence, staring back at him in thought. As the seconds ticked on by, his almond eyes grew more withdrawn… less hopeful. He grew guarded and embarrassed, but Alex couldn't put her thoughts on fast forward no matter how hard she tried.

 

“I…” she started with a wince, “... really don’t know, Jonas. I still feel like I’ve been here before. Like deja vu or ‘something.’ I mean, yeah… we’re not stuck in a loop anymore, but I still feel like I’ve been here before… you know?”

 

“No - yeah, I mean that’s understandable and yeah - major deja vu. Still feeling it.”

 

“... maybe we should… just… go to bed, okay? Maybe we’ll feel more ‘solid’ in the morning.”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Jonas nodded, looking like he was trying to convince himself that things were fine more than he was her, “Sure…”

 

They polished off the hot pocket crumbs and shared the last bottom-bits of chunky monkey ice cream, played with the station chatter on the same radio they’d used on the island a thousand times before. The both of them listened to the disk jockey play shitty music interspersed by some ‘okay’ tunes.

 

Alex wasn't really sure when it happened, or why for that matter, but something about one of the songs triggered a memory of Jonas holding her in her bed, bare-chest sticking to her skin with old sweat and the smell of… of sex in the air. There was this feeling of content pleasure - of being sneaky and biting each other's mouths to keep the noise down… of going slow, so her box spring didn't make enough noise to warrant a room check by Michael or her parents.

 

Alex blushed as the music rattled from the radio and felt… hot. 

 

Jonas had stepped outside on the back patio several minutes ago when the song started. She looked out across the living room as he leaned back against the sliding glass door in that fitted black undershirt. Broad shouldered… tapered waist and narrow hips…

 

He was hugged his side and chain-smoking, standing as far under the low jutting roof to keep out of the streaming rain. Alex could see the smoke trails curling around the bare porch bulb; painting the lines of falling rain like glittering spider webs. 

 

In some loop, they’d… fucked, boned… had sex… whatever people liked to call it and if the memory swimming under her skin was the same one Jonas had of her then… well, things made a lot more sense.

 

Alex understood his predicament, sorta. 

 

It was hard to look at him now and not see the Jonas that had kicked his boxers off under the blanket her Grandmother made for her - hard to banish the feeling of having sex for the first time in her childhood bed with her parents home and her brother in the attic. Fucking while trying to not make a sound as Jonas brought her all the hopeful pleasure she figured would be impossible to achieve the first time. 

 

Had there been a second time? - a third? - a fourth and so on before the loop repeated?

 

**Been. Here. Be. Fore.**

 

The patio door slid open. The rain outside immediately swamped the radio station's idea of choice music and Jonas, without knowing what things were running through his stepsister's head, eased himself back inside the pillow fort reeking of cigarettes and hormones; drawing her eyes to the dip of his stomach and the drawstring pajama bottoms…

 

Alex felt her eyes linger - felt her face heat up and her insides get muddled with mixed sensations. 

 

This was… it wasn’t smart. 

 

They weren’t friends this time. Her and Jonas had to live with each other for the next year or two… or more and they were legally brother and sister. 

 

It was wrong - it was dumb and selfish. 

 

“Jonas…” she whispered. 

 

There was something in her tone that made his fists clench in his pockets.

 

Jonas looked over and saw the Alex he’d been with under the covers and Alex looked and saw the Jonas she’d fooled around with and invited up to her room when everyone was asleep… the girl who told him to bring some condoms and a couple beers because she didn’t know how far she wanted to go and that being prepared for the home run was a good idea.

 

When she leaned in, Jonas met her more than halfway. He kissed her hard enough that their teeth banged for a painful second. 

 

Jonas breathed a wince.

 

Alex laughed a little and then reached around his neck and pulled him down. They made out inside the half fort that sagged from their poor craftsmanship; music becoming a mishmash of sounds beyond the soft press and pull of their lips. 

 

Alex sighed, kissed Jonas’ chin and forgot - for a moment - which loop she was in.

 

His fingers pulled her ponytail loose as she laid soft kisses down his neck until the rough crew neck hit her lips. Against his throat, Alex paused as Jonas stopped short of tugging her baggy shirt past her stomach.

 

"Wait-wait… this isn't," he panted softly - a knee braced on either side of her thighs, "I'm not-I'm your, and Michael isn't-"

 

“I know it’s not the same, but it feels like it’s already happened - it has somehow…”

 

“Yeah, but… shouldn’t we, I dunno… resist the temptation or at least pretend to?”

 

"Ugh, make up your mind already," Alex grumbled, flopping into the sofa cushions with a pent-up sound of sexual tension, "We did it before. You remember it, and now I remember it and… look, I know you've got condoms in your suitcase… or you did… so, why don't we go upstairs and just - actually no - you can go upstairs and get them, but… I'm willing if you are."

 

“Jesus… okay,” Jonas lowered himself down for a kiss that felt familiar and new in equal measure, before crawling off her to jog across the house and up two flights of stairs. 

 

Alex blinked inside the dark cocoon of sheets and candlelight and static-laced music, remembering and forgetting and feeling her body start to warm up in preparation. Jonas knocked something over upstairs. The ceiling thunked with his footsteps a minute later, and it was kinda… cute… how fast he stomped down the stairs.

 

She saw the shadow and bulge of an erection under the drawstrings and scooted up as he took a knee to the couch, straddling her again with a condom between his fingers. 

 

Jonas hovered, catching his breath and smiled. He ducked down and slanted his mouth against her own; tongue touching her lips. Alex opened up, fell back into the cushions and kissed him like she remembered doing in her bed in another timeline with a different her and another Jonas.

 

They shifted, grinding a little here and there. The motions rekindled a faded memory of a second time after their first. 

 

Alex moaned into his mouth, remembering a quickie in the basement while Michael had a graduation party upstairs; drinking and making toasts and being charming while his little sister got bent over the washing machine by the guy who smoked cigarettes and listened to dark house rock music.

 

“We-” Jonas said inside her mouth and pulled away enough to asked her again, “We’re doing this, right? You sure - like… you’re sure-sure?”

 

“I’m sure-sure,” Alex whispered back, feeling more confident as the awkwardness of doing something new for the first time faded behind past experience - past life experience more like…

 

Jonas nodded, taking a deep breath before pushing his thumbs under her shirt. 

 

“Okay, but I don’t want to do anything you’re gonna murder me for in the morning…”

 

“Trust me,” she told him quietly, “you’ll know if I don’t like something.”

 

"I know," Jonas said and gave her a side smirk which looked even better without a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He started hiking up the thin material over her chest, revealing the snug sports bra before that too was lifted; skin exposed to a guy for the first time since she was a little kid, running around the front yard with the garden hose as Ren chased her down with all the enthusiasm of a five-year-old. She was a woman now or felt like one at least, and this was… knew and exciting and it was Jonas - her second in command - experiencing this with her. 

 

Alex let her eyes fall closed as the air made her small breasts tighten. The cold didn't last long, but she was ready for Jonas' mouth when he leaned in to wrap soft lips around a puckered nipple. 

 

She sighed, feeling arousal swirl behind her navel, and lifted her hips, pulling a knee out from between his legs to wrap her calf around his side. It sorta felt like whatever nerve endings she had in her breasts connected directly to the bundle between her legs. Each suck and lick of his tongue made her insides feel thick and damp. 

 

Jonas kissed her breasts, sucked with the tact of a guy who kinda knew what he was doing and raked his teeth down in a way that said he at least knew what he was doing to her.

 

Her own memory was filled with holes, more so than his, it seemed. 

 

**Sunken.**

 

Alex knew it for a certainty when he put a hand down her pajama shorts and found precisely what buttons to press and swirl. 

 

It was… overwhelming… incredible… weird - a little. 

 

She swallowed, shifted against his fingers and moaned. Alex spread her legs wider and sucked in a breath right before Jonas leaned up to kiss her again, taking a moan from her throat with him. His palm flattened, fingers spreading along her dampness and then - slowly - slid a middle finger inside. 

 

It stung a bit… which made sense. Her body was fresh even if her mind wasn't, but she was wet and warm and ready as she'd ever been.

 

“It’s gonna be hard-” Jonas said; voice dropping into a groan when Alex pulled his drawstring knot loose and heeled his pants down his hips, “-I mean… jesus, Alex… it’s hard now but what about when our parents come home?”

 

“Hey,” she said with a pinch to his naked hip, “how about we not call them ‘our parents’ and maybe… don’t bring that up before… you know. Kinda a mood killer.”

 

Jonas smirked, smelling of musk and cigarettes as he curled his finger in and out with firm pressure, “I dunno - it’s kinda hot when you think about it. Sneaking around and being all… rebellious.”

 

“For you maybe,” she sighed and stroked his bulky shoulders as his fingers played with her, “... the guy who hasn’t been to jail.”

 

"Juvie," he corrected and opened his mouth to say more, but Alex tugged him down for a soft kiss and rocked into his hand.

 

"Do you - do you think… you can be quiet long enough to get the condom on at least?" She admonished him with sex in her throat, but smiled and found herself laughing for the first time in what felt like… forever really when he winked and pinched her inner thigh before tugging his hand out of her cotton shorts. 

 

She watched - in deep shadows - as Jonas rolled the condom down a long, weighty dick that looked as familiar in form as it did new; ruddy like his cheeks when they blushed. It was the first time she’d seen it, but for all the worrying Alex used to have over her first real encounter with a guy’s dick, there was nothing but admiration and excitement. She helped him tug her shorts down her legs, leaving them on the floor while she stared openly at the way he bounced and bobbed with the motions. 

 

“Did it hurt the first time? I, uh - don’t remember that part,” he said, looking a little sheepish in the glow of the open flames.

 

"A little, but not for long," Alex told him, remembering the way she'd bit her lip until the inner flesh wept, but that had been to keep quiet whereas now, it was just the two of them. They didn't need to hold back.

 

Jonas nodded, turning his attention back to her lips - tongueing the ice cream off her teeth - while his fingers rubbed and stroked between her legs. He rolled nerves back and forth until she was panting and shaking.

 

Sweat grew unflatteringly between their mingled breaths but Alex had never felt like this before. Even the memories didn't hold a candle to the intensity of the current moment. He knew her body nearly as well as she did her own, and slowly but surely, she was hiding her face in the corner of his neck, gasping through an orgasm about as life-affirming as that night outside the Mini Market had been existentially destructive.

 

The both of them fumbled, Jonas making soft, breathy sounds as Alex caught her breath; trying to figure out the position they'd been in before while her mind floated happily.

 

Jonas’ dick poked her too low and then too high.

 

They both giggled a bit before she tugged him carefully to the point where she was the hottest; wettest. He groaned - a sound broken and a bit alarming - as he sunk inside. That pinch of pain wasn't sharp, wasn't dull either. Alex felt her insides burn softly and that was it. The discomfort was gone by the second thrust, and on the fifth, it felt… nice - good. It felt like she wasn't alone and someone - Jonas - was there. Obviously, he was… but it was different and harder to explain.

 

Alex held him around the middle with a palm under the back of his shirt, feeling the way his muscles stretched and bunched as he worked back and forth within her. The sheets billowed over his head, making the backdrop behind him look like a light show as the candles caught the dip, leaving dark shadows where it didn’t. 

 

“You-” Alex moaned loud enough to prove a point, “-don’t have to be quiet, Jonas.”

 

"I… know," he hissed, grabbing the armrest above her head like a life preserver in choppy waters, "It's just… I don't know." 

 

His eyes rolled back, and his lips thinned, breath puffing out as his hips rocked against her. The feeling was tight and blistering, but Alex didn't think she could finish this way… not again at least. He didn't need to hold back for her.

 

“It’s okay, you can… fuck!”

 

Jonas shifted his weight to the right and knocked something inside her that sent her nails into his back and a loud, sharp whine from her throat. Jonas gasped against her forehead, kissed her brow and panted with each twisting thrust. Alex felt her body heat up like a rash, but the good kind… the kind that didn’t mean a trip to the ER for an adrenaline shot. Maybe, that’s what Jonas was trying to find? She didn’t know… he knew more than she did about… whatever they’d been doing in that loop.

 

“Can you-” Alex began to ask.

 

“Harder?”

 

She nodded against his lips and held onto Jonas' back tighter as he snapped his hips into her own. The wet sound of skin smacking brought a blush to her face, but it was better than any first time embarrassment, and so Alex curled into it and wrapped her legs around his lower back until she could feel every hilt and bump deep inside; setting fire to her middle in a bath of wet heat and clenching muscle.

 

Alex suddenly understood all the hype. 

 

She knew, as Jonas hitched with groans and sharp exhales above her, what people like Ren and Clarissa and even her brother wouldn't shut up about. Sex was… it was cleansing - it was amazing. Alex held on tight, winced as something unlike her first orgasm built and overflowed. Her insides clenched and Jonas' pace stuttered, halting a second on that first contraction and then as if he was lost for a second in his own private world of pleasure, started pounding her; lips skating across her temple.

 

“Ah-Alex,” Jonas gasped against her ear, making the growliest, most not-Jonas-sounding groan she’d ever heard. 

 

Don’t know how she did, but Alex could feel it when he came… somehow, despite the condom and clung to him as her own pleasure wrapped around her, swaddled in his body heat and weight and the shroud of candlelit darkness contained under tented-sheets. 

 

She sorta figured it would be weird afterward - like maybe they'd both realize what a huge mistake they'd made letting some other people's memories decide the course of their own paths, but… it wasn't weird - it wasn't awkward.

 

Jonas chuckled and kissed her, both of them just hanging around without feeling the need to fill the silence with mindless chatter.

 

The power came back on an hour later, startling them both awake on the couch, wrapped around one another on their sides with their pajamas askew and the used condom hanging out of the empty ice cream tub. After watching some late night looney tunes and Jonas yawning hotly against the back of her head, he stood up to have a smoke break. It would have been fine if he hadn’t also tried to clean up the mess on the coffee table beforehand...

 

Jonas, when not stuck in limbo with The Sunken toying with them, was apparently a butterfinger, because Alex found herself helping him figure out the washer and dryer set up since somehow he’d upended half of the condom on his leg and the rest on the carpet.

 

She blushed when he brought up the joined memory of them doing it over the washer while her knees still shook from the physical strain they’d been under while wrapped around his hips earlier.

 

“So, do you think we can pull this off?” Jonas asked while shaking the powdered detergent into the washer receptacle.

 

“What? The whole… going steady under your Dad’s nose and my Mom’s watchful eye?”

 

“Yeah, or ya know… everyone. It’s not like this is exactly illegal but… totally looked down on, right?”

 

"I dunno," Alex mused, pulling herself up on the dryer with a slight wince at the throb between her legs. Jonas gave her a look under his bangs as she tried to rub the strain off her browline, "... let's just… keep it on the down-low for now."

 

“Yeah, you’re… probably right.”

 

“Yup, I usually am. Better get used to it.”

 

“Hey,” Jonas raised his hands in placation, reminding her of the way he’d been trying to joke with her during a few of the loops, back when he was scared but trying to cope, “... you’re smart and… beautiful and you cut us free from The Sunken… somehow. I don’t think I have any room to disagree with that statement.”

 

Alex smiled and ignored the stacked memories of Michael in the corner as Jonas added the fabric softener and set the timer. With her foot, she nudged his hip and gave him a meaningful expression. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything… because… I really thought I could save Michael and turn things around… but, I’m glad. I’m… happy you’re here, even if you are my stepbrother.”

 

Jonas blushed pink and rubbed at his stomach below the black undershirt, “Yeah…” he admitted, “... it’s not ideal, but I’m glad too.”

 

“Just don’t use all the hot water or I’ll show you no mercy.”

 

At that Jonas laughed - stomach clutching laugher - and Alex socked him in the ribs with her foot and laugh as well and decided that she couldn't have been more grateful than she was now… teaching him how to use the washing equipment and talking about hot water heaters and what else was tasty to throw in the microwave.

 

**Leave.**

 

**Possible.**

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to those who read this ficlet. I’d been sitting on it for awhile. Ever since I finished the game, and then did a second playthrough with the secret ending, I’ve wanted to write about Jonas and Alex. They had such great chemistry throughout the game and I always wondered what could have happened during the other loops. 
> 
> If you have the time, please leave me a comment and let me know what you liked or what you didn’t like. 
> 
> Thank you to Darth Fucamus for looking this over for any major errors. Any typos or mistakes are mine. <3
> 
>  
> 
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